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Bureaucracy

I got my Stanford bill this weekend for the remainder of my balance — $3,334 — and my outside scholarship check for $3,333. When I told this to the financial aid office as I dropped off my check, they told me to trek across campus to Student Financial Services to pay the remainder of my balance: one goddamn dollar.

So I make it to Student Financial Services and explain the situation, and the guy behind the desk just laughs and asks me why they sent me all the way across campus to take care of this. He says they’re not supposed to take any cash, but that he’s going to make an exception in this case. And so he photocopies my ID and my dollar, stamps and signs it, and I’m good to go for another quarter. Plus I have this utterly pointless receipt: